In addition to the user authentication provided by Zendesk, you can also use single sign-on (SSO) to authenticate your users outside of Zendesk. There are three types of SSO: social account, business account, and enterprise.
This article covers the following topics:
Essential facts for SSO
Below are some essential facts about the available SSO options. These are explained in greater detail in this article.
- Admins and agents can sign in with either their Google, Microsoft, or Zendesk accounts, or can sign in directly by going to their Zendesk URL and entering their username and password. End users can sign in with social accounts and their Zendesk accounts.
- If your Zendesk account is closed or restricted and a user tries to sign in with a different email than the one registered in Zendesk Support, their request will be rejected.
- You can have multiple active SAML and JSON Web Token (JWT) SSO configurations, which can be assigned to different collections of users. Each will have their own remote sign-in pages.
- If you have more than one SSO configuration assigned to end users or team members, you must specify one as the primary authentication method for those users.
- No matter what authentication method you choose, Zendesk stores all users in the same database.
- 如果你using a third-party identity provider to authenticate, you must configure the Zendesk app with the identity provider.
- It is not possible to apply different SSO options to individual brands, unless you usea custom script for JWT.
- If you place a wildcard (*) in the blocklist, users will no longer be able to authenticate or create an account with SSO. SeeUsing the allowlist and blocklist to control access to your Zendesk.
Social and business account SSO
- Agents and admins can use either Google or Microsoft (Azure Active Directory and Office 365) SSO methods to log into theirbusinessaccounts.
- End users can use Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft SSO methods using theirsocial/personalaccounts.
- Google: The Google sign-in supports both Gmail and Google Apps. The Federated Login Service is disabled by default for Google Apps Business and Education accounts. The domain admin can enable it from the Control Panel athttp://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain/SetupIdp, whereyourdomainis replaced with your domain. Business account authentication supports two-factor authentication enabled by the user or for the Google Apps domain (Google Authenticator).
- Microsoft: Microsoft sign-in is not supported in the iPad version of Zendesk Support for Mobile app.
To add social and business account SSO to your sign-in page, seeEnabling social and business account single sign-on.
Enterprise SSO
You can require users to sign in using enterprise SSO, or you can activate multiple sign-in options (for example, enterprise SSOandZendesk authentication) and let users decide how they want to sign in. (The word "enterprise" in this context doesn't refer to Zendesk Enterprise plans.) SeeGiving users different ways to sign into Zendesk.
About enterprise SSO
When you direct users to enterprise SSO, you're bypassing Zendesk and authenticating your users externally. When users navigate to your Zendesk sign-in page or click a link to access your Zendesk account, they can authenticate by signing into a corporate server or a third-party identity provider, such as OneLogin or Okta. Enabling enterprise SSO also affects the iOS and Android versions of the Zendesk mobile app.
- Users navigate to a Zendesk page or subdomain.
- If not already authenticated, users are redirected to your corporate server or third-party identity provider sign-in page, depending on the enterprise SSO option you selected.
- Users enter their sign-in credentials.
- If valid, users are redirected back to the original Zendesk page.
Both your end users and team members can sign in to your Zendesk using enterprise SSO. You can configure enterprise SSO only for end users, team members, or a mix of both.
The advantage of using enterprise SSO is that you have complete control over your users behind your firewall. You authenticate your users once, against your own user authentication system, and then grant them access to many other resources both inside and outside of your firewall. Your user management is performed outside of Zendesk, but your corporate user authentication system is still synced with Zendesk. When you add a user account for a new employee, they will have immediate access to Zendesk, or if you delete a user account, that employee will no longer have access to Zendesk.
By default, the only data that Zendesk stores for each user is their name and email address, but it's possible to sync more user data to Zendesk, like the user's organization.
You have the option of keeping Zendesk authentication with your enterprise SSO authentication. If you decide to disable Zendesk authentication, all Zendesk user passwords will be permanently deleted within 24 hours.
If your SSO service is temporarily unavailable, you can still access your Zendesk account. SeeAccessing your Zendesk account when your SSO service is down.
Enterprise SSO options
- JSON Web Token (JWT): Credentials and user information is sent in JSON format encrypted using a Zendesk Shared Secret. For information on configuring JWT SSO, seeEnabling JWT single sign-on.
- Secure Assertion Markup Language (SAML): SAML is supported by many identity provider services, such as Okta, OneLogin, Active Directory, and LDAP. For information on configuring SAML SSO, see支持SAML单点登录.
You can use the same option for all users or different options for different collections of users. This is ideal if you have separate sets of users existing in different locations that you don't want to merge. If you use more than one enterprise SSO configuration, you can present users with multiple SSO sign-in options on the Zendesk sign-in page or redirect users to the primary SSO. SeeGiving users different ways to sign into Zendesk.
34 Comments
Hello,
I have a site that is hosted on an AWS server with authentication. I want to know if users log in to Zendesk and when they click on the site link within Zendesk, they are able to access the site without them to login again on that site. Any help would be really appreciated.
Hi
我们的平台有多个客户。一些登录via username and password and some log in via their own internal SSO. Once they have logged into our application, I would like them to be able to click a link and be re-directed to our help centre without having to log in again, albeit to a different site. Is this possible? If so, what is the best way to achieve this?
Thanks
James
HiJames SkeneThe way you are describing your use case it looks possible. Do you mind creating a support ticket for this where someone from Zendesk can help you and also have the opportunity to ask questions specific to your setup?
HiRakesh Singh
Could you please create a support ticket and provide additional details of your use case, screenshots anything else which can help support agent to understand your setup? Thanks.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.